Denver Episcopal Area Resident Bishop
Elaine Stanovsky

United Methodists throughout the Yellowstone Conference,

God wants to work wonders through us. Are you ready?

In July I was consecrated a bishop in our church and assigned to the Denver Area. You and your church are part of an area that includes 262 churches in the Rocky Mountain Conference and 128 churches in the Yellowstone Conference, spread across the states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and Montana. I moved to Denver from Seattle over Labor Day weekend, and began my ministry with you on September 1. My husband, Clint, will be traveling back and forth between Seattle and Denver a good deal while he completes an important environmental clean-up project in Skykomish, Washington. Our three sons, Walker, Micah and Axel, are in and beyond college. Walker has returned to the Seattle area, having finished his undergraduate degree at Harvard. Micah is beginning a year of study abroad in Jaipur, India, and Axel is a sophomore at the University of Washington.

God has been faithful to the human family and to the created world throughout all time. God continues to be faithful to us today. God loves us, cares for us, forgives us when we stumble, and offers us grace upon grace. Thanks be to God for all these mercies!

But God is also on a mission. And God has called and empowered us to be missionaries in partnership. Each and every one of us is an ambassador of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In a thousand ways every day, God offers us the opportunity to share the blessings we have received. In how we treat the people around us and our care for our pets and other living creatures. As we light candles and sing praises, read the scripture. In our volunteer work, tutoring students, cleaning the church building, serving meals, visiting the sick and imprisoned. In a thousand ways every day, our lives matter in God’s mission for the world.

I am writing you today to pledge that as your bishop, I want to be in partnership with you to strengthen the ministry of the United Methodist Church in this widespread Denver Area, by strengthening the faith and the faithful witness of every single one of us United Methodists. So, in the days and months and years ahead, I will be working with all of you, trying to open the pathways of faith development and formation among us, so that we will be strong disciples in mission and ministry.

Are you are ready? Great things are going to happen among us as we open ourselves to the wild winds of the Holy Spirit in new and unexpected ways.

God wants to work wonders through us.

I'm ready if you are.

Your sister in Christ,
Bishop Elaine